The Duties of a Malfoy
by maggy black
Summary: A look inside of Draco's life during the war, as it turns out, he doesn't actually hate muggleborns after all.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: A look inside Draco's life during the war.

1995

"Do it, Draco," Bellatrix Lestrange taunted with a deranged glint in her eye. Draco glared at his Aunt defiantly, and disarmed her to release her grip on the girl she was holding.

Draco Malfoy caught the whimpering girl, holding her close to support her quivering form. He began to move, wincing as Mary whimpered in pain with each step they took. Mary was the first to break the silence once they were out of earshot.

"What is it she wants you to do?" Mary asked, her voice hoarse and raspy from her time spent screaming in pain from Bellatrix's Cruciatus Curse. They arrived in a smaller sitting room on the west wing of the manor, led them to a sofa and helped her to sit down. He took a deep breath before attempting to answer her question that was still lingering in the air.

"I-" Draco began but struggled with his words, "I don't want to talk about it," he told her, hanging his head solemnly. He took off his blazer and began wiping the dirt and blood from both of their faces.

"Please," she begged, her curiosity getting the best of her. He raised his head to look into her eyes; tears had begun to blur his vision as he dropped the now soiled blazer. Struggling to move, Mary closed a small amount of the distance between them and placed her hand on his arm. He laughed a derisive, mirthless chuckle as his eyes fell to the Dark Mark that was covered by his shirt sleeve. It wasn't permanent yet, but it would be soon enough, if only she knew what she was touching. A burst of angry power surged through him and he turned toward her sharply, throwing her arm off him. Her tears began anew as she begged him not to hurt her.

"I'm not going to hurt you." He told her softly, letting the anger ebb away again.

"You're not?" she asked shakily and disbelieving.

"No, Mary, I couldn't." He reached up to stroke her cheek gently. "Never."

Mary smiled hesitantly at the gesture, Draco could hear his Mother and Aunt having a go at each other in the other room, and he was sure he knew what it was about. He tried to block them out just enough to not hear what they were yelling, but not so much that he couldn't hear it entirely. As long as the heated female voices continued, he was safe sitting there with Mary.

He sat there, ruminative for the next fifteen minutes or so, eyes glazed over, not looking at Mary, just leaning against the back of the sofa, keeping Mary's hand in his.

"Draco?" she asked as the voices stopped. It wasn't her voice that brought him out of his reverie, but the cease of voices in the other room.

"Shit," he said. He heard footsteps steadily coming closer to the room; he held Mary's hand tightly praying to Merlin that they were his mother's, not his Aunts. He let out a breath he hadn't realised he was holding when the door opened a crack and the pale, strained face of Narcissa Malfoy poked through it. When she saw that they were in there she quickly slipped through the opening and closed the door quickly behind her. She wasted no time in making her way over to the sofa and crouched down in front of them, speaking in a hurried, hushed voice.

"Listen, now that Mary has been found out to be a muggle-born, she cannot go back to school," she told her son as if Mary wasn't even there. "I realise that you care for the girl and want to help her. I sent an owl to Andromeda as soon as I realised this, she has graciously offered to take her in. When I take you to the train station, I will apparate her there, but we have to go now. As far as Bellatrix knows, she is returning to school to be… taken care of…" a grim look spread across her already sullen face. "I'm sorry." Narcissa turned toward the girl for the first time with a surprisingly apologetic look and she pulled a rope out from her robes. Mary didn't respond, she just looked down into her lap, allowing whatever she had coming to her. She felt too worn, too defeated to struggle or say anything, too much to even display any emotions anymore. There was a glimmer of hope though, if Narcissa's plan worked, she would just have to hold on until then. The older woman stood up and stepped back, Draco rose from the couch and extended his hand toward her; she accepted it and allowed him to pull her into a standing position as well. As she looked up into the face of the woman standing a few feet away she could see her age lines on her beautiful face, her mouth turned down in a permanent frown. They heard footsteps walking around in a nearby room, and everyone tensed, though the footsteps did not come closer, the sound still put everyone on edge.

"We must hurry." Narcissa quickly knelt beside the girl ropes in hand.

Narcissa bound the girl's wrists together whispering "is this too tight?" in her ear as she did so. Mary shook her head and allowed the woman to finish binding her.

Draco raised his eyebrow at his Mother, confused as to why she was performing that task the muggle way and she seemed to have understood because she responded in an incredibly low voice, just in case anyone was listening, "I wanted to make sure they weren't too tight, I don't know how to control that with magic" Draco nodded and opened the door for the women. As soon as they stepped out of the room Narcissa started handling Mary roughly, shoving her and yelling at her, "Get going Mudblood!" Bellatrix stood by watching the scene with an ugly, evil smile on her face, she started giggling manically.

"Yeah, out of this house! Faster, you filthy Mudblood!" she screamed in a delighted tone. There was something seriously wrong with that woman, second most psychotic person Draco knew next to Voldemort. "_Cruc-_"

"No!" Narcissa begin to scream, interrupting the horrible curse her sister had started to utter. "Really Bellatrix, I don't want to have to carry the girl, please leave her conscious," she finished in attempt to cover up her momentary lapse of judgement.

"Oh alright," Bellatrix pouted.

Narcissa draped a cloak around the girl to hide the binding from passing muggles on the way to the train station.

Once outside the wards of Malfoy Manor, they walked down the street to the apparation point, "I'll side along Mary. Draco you are good to apparate by yourself?" Draco glared at her.

"Yes Mother, I think I can manage," he told her icily.

"I was just making sure," she told him, offended at his reaction to her kindness, "I'm just not used to the idea of you being all grown up," she told him, in a rare moment of sappiness. The Malfoy family tried to stay as cool as possible, let as little real emotion show as possible. It was how they were raised and it was how they raised Draco, just like a proper old Pureblood family should be. But there were moments like this every so often where emotion just washed over her and she couldn't control it entirely. Everything that had been going on since the beginning of the war flooded her very being. Everything she had watched her innocent young son do. Helping torture muggles, undergoing rigorous training to kill, getting the dark mark burned into his arm…

"Mom? Are you okay?" Draco asked her with great concern, the iciness he had displayed only moments before melted away completely. He put his hand on her shoulders. She had completely let go of Mary and let herself fall into Draco's arms he was now even taller than her. This brought another wave of fresh tears, reminding her of how much he had grown.

"I'm so sorry," she sobbed quietly into his chest, "I'm sorry."

"Mom? It's okay… I was rude, I shouldn't have been so offended," he told her, patting her back and wondering why in the name of Merlin she was so upset.

"No," she shook her head and lifted her head from his chest slightly, just enough to look up at him. He saw the pain and misery in her eyes. "I'm sorry for being such a horrible moth-"

"Mom! No! You are not," he told her sternly. He reached out to the side and placed a quick disillusionment charm on Mary, realising how weird this scene must look to anyone passing by on the street.

"No Draco, listen to me," she told him fiercely, not allowing his rejection of her apology. "I am sorry you have had to grow up so fast, I am so sorry, it is not fair, not at all. And nobody, at any age, should have to grow up in the ways that you have. I-" she took a deep breath shuddering and shaking a little. She took a step back and smoothed down her clothes in an attempt to compose herself. She wiped all emotion from her face and told him in a very measured tone, "We need get you and Mary to the train station."

"Your right," he told her grimly, trying with all his might to not dwell on her apology, to save it until later, in private quarters. Malfoys did not lose composure in public. He disapparated to Muggle London, and waited for his Mother and Mary. It wasn't long before they appeared beside him with a _crack _and together they silently made their way to King's Cross.

**A/N: Hope you like it, I know, not much back story, but it will come, for now I think what we know from the books is enough to at least have it make sense to a certain extent. **


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: So I think I only got two readers from the first chapter, hopefully they're still following and hopefully I'll get more readers out of this chapter! This one is in Mary's POV about a month after the Easter break.**

Mary woke up smiling on May tenth; she had just had the most fantastic dream… well it had ended that way at least. It began as it usually did, with the most nefarious witch she had ever had the displeasure of meeting, Bellatrix Lestrange. But this dream, this dream had ended almost how it had in real life, except a million times better. Instead of his mother being the one to apparate her to a safe place it was he, Draco. And they certainly didn't end up here in this busy old house with a loud mouthed obnoxious old woman that constantly felt the need to remind her to be gracious of her extraordinary generosity. She also for some reason had it in her head that Mary was Slytherin. _Batty old woman, _she thought. Instead, he apparated them to a beach, far away, where they walked hand in hand along the shore. Stopping to exchange some brief yet passionate kisses every so often, laying down in the soft warm sand as Draco held her close and their kisses became much less brief…

Her cheeks grew warm as she thought of this dream, desperately hoping that no one would be performing legilimency on her anytime soon. But the best part of that dream is that while she lay on the beach she knew that Bellatrix was being punished for her cruelty by Draco's mother. Though what amount of punishment would suffice for that wretched death eater's actions Mary couldn't say. She was surprised how well she held up under the control of Bellatrix at the Malfoy Manor. If the results weren't so painful she might have enjoyed her clever comebacks that the older woman found quite vexing. She supposed that Rowena Ravenclaw had the right idea about wit being the most powerful skill… or almost.

Mary had spent a good day or two dwelling on Hogwarts' founders, she had even studied what she could from Muriel's library. It wasn't as big of a selection as Hogwarts itself of course, but it was still fairly impressive for a personal collection, and ever more impressive still for a woman she couldn't imagine sitting there and reading.

Dean Thomas was the one who found the book. A few of us were hiding out in the library, as we so often did, in attempts to escape the scrutiny of the querulous owner of the house, though our efforts were for naught. As soon as she found us in the library she started badgering us about our social lives, telling us that being nerdy and bookish wasn't about to get us paired off. As if that's what we're all worried about these days. On the way out of the library to find a new hiding spot, however, we all grabbed a book on the way. We found a cozy corner in her den and sat down to reading them.

We read in silence for a few minutes before Luna spoke in her dreamy voice, "All happy families are alike," she began, and when none of us asked how, but just stared at her waiting for her to continue she finished with, "they're all Pureblood."

I looked at her with a quirked eyebrow, but she continued to speak, "but not all Pueblood families are happy."

"No kidding," Dean replied unexpectedly, he proceeded to read from the book he had grabbed from the library on his way out. It was a thick volume, with an artistically sketched coat of arms on the front, looking very similar to that of Hogwarts. He read us the story of the Ravenclaw family, or at least, the first chapter of it which was merely a summary of the Ravenclaw section. It turns out that the Ravenclaws were an old Pureblood family with many family secrets and conspiracies and they were not at all happy.

I brought that book to my bed that night and stayed up reading it, I got through the summary of each founder that first night. The book was divided into four sections, one for each founder with a summary of each at the beginning, and pages and pages of grueling details of their lives following.

I spent the next week reading through the rest of the Ravencaw section in depth. It was good to have something to occupy my mind and I was earning an incredible amount about the founder of my House including her upbringing, details about her family including some famous, or rather infamous, family feuds, about the Diadem of Ravenclaw and some letters of correspondence between Rowena and the other founders.

As nice as it was to have something to distract me, I had had few breaks from reading the whole week and I needed a break or my mind would probably shut itself down from the information overload. So, on Sunday after a wonderful meal, compliments of Mrs. Weasley, when I shut myself in the room I shared with the other girls, instead of pulling out the book as I had been for the past week, I instead pulled out my mp3 player. I had had it shoved deep in my pocket on the train ride home for Easter break, ready to use it as soon as I stepped into Muggle London, but of course never got the chance. The death eaters that were waiting for me grabbed me by the arms before I had even fully stepped off the train.

And so I lay there, grateful it hadn't been found during my time at the Malfoy Manor, listening to some of my favourites. I watched the door waiting for Ginny to come in; I wanted to introduce her to Muggle music, judging by her father's curious questions he kept asking me about the muggle world, I had gotten the impression she hadn't been exposed to much muggle stuff. I had tried to introduce it to my friend Lisa when she was staying over during summer break but she claimed it was too "jejune" for her, even for a Ravenclaw she can be pretty pretentious.

And so later that evening that is how Draco found the girl that had been the star of his dreams… and nightmares for the past month or so. Huddled on the cot that Mary had taken refuge on with the young redhead Weaslette, each with an earbud in their ear bobbing along to some muggle music.

**A/N: Please review everyone! It's nice to know people are reading the story, helps motivate me to post, and also any comments or suggestions or anything like that would be appreciated and will always be considered :) I try to stay as canon as possible, if there are any facts or details that are off, feel free to point them out, I may or may not fix it but it's always good to know. **


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